Desert Botanical Garden

n Friday, Karsten's class had a field trip to the Desert Botanical Garden. I am embarrassed to say, I have never been. Though I have heard so much about the glass art exhibit, Chihuly, I've been wanting to go. The reason for the field trip for Kar's class was to go to to the Butterfly Pavilion. I was hoping we would be able to see some of the glass art while we were there also. Kar's class was split into three different tours. Luckily, the glass art is EVERYWHERE around the gardens so I was super excited about THAT! The tour was great, we had a nice leader and he really interacted well with the kids. He re-named the cactus, "plantimals" and categorized each how they looked like an animal; there was an elephant, caterpillar, cow, bunny, etc. It was cute. As I said before, as we walked around to each different cactus or plant, we were fortunate enough to see the Chihuly glass art. There is only one word for this art - AMAZING! I have never in my life, seen something that compares to this! The exhibit is only up until May and if you haven't gone, please do! It is something that needs to be seen!

All these pictures are glass . . .








After walking for 30-40 minutes we headed to the Butterfly Pavilion. I wasn't sure what to expect, as I was too concerned with making sure I was going to be able to see the Chihuly glass art. We waited in line for just a few minutes to enter the pavilion. We were instructed to watch where we stepped, the butterflies could be on the ground, and if one landed on us, we could not touch it or brush it off, we had to find an employee to take a soft feather duster to take it off of us. When we stepped into the pavilion, the one word that comes to mind to describe it is, MAGICAL! There are flowers EVERYWHERE! There are ponds and koi fish and trees and BUTTERFLIES! EVERYWHERE! Beautiful, colorful, magical butterflies! We just walked around and around, looking at all the butterflies. The gorgeous flowers were just a backdrop to the beautiful butterflies. We were given a guide, so we could identify each butterfly from it's color. We loved it! We would point and look and figure out each butterflies' name. One even landed on Karsten's shirt! It was so cool! Aahhh, what a wonderful experience. The whole trip was great! If you'd like to spend an hour seeing AMAZING art and plants and experience MAGICAL butterflies and flowers, then get yourself to DBG!









The BEST teacher in the whole world!




My little caterpillar . . .